Last week, on 15th August 2019, Ural Airlines Flight 178 experienced a bird strike at take-off and crash landed seconds later in the cornfield near Moscow’s Zhukovsky airport in the suburb named “Ramensk”. Why this crash has been dubbed “Miracle over Ramensk”?
First, let’s take a look at the facts. Ural Airlines is a Russian airline that operates 46 aircraft and it was founded in 1993. The airline has a very good safety record during it’s 26 years. The flight “U6 178” had 233 passengers on board and it departed from Moscow’s Zhukovsky airport towards Simferopol in Crimea, Russia at approximately 03:13 UTC. During the take off, immediately the aircraft was struck by flock of gulls which first caused the left engine failure. Simultaneously, there was another bird strike on the right engine which caused almost near-failure of the engine. Now, the right engine had insufficient power to maintain the flight. Airborne, now over 700 feet (approx 200m) from the ground the aircraft struggled to keep the lift and pilots Damir Yusupov and Georgy Murzin had to decide in a split second what decision to make.
Captain Damir Yusupov
When one engine failed they thought they could still turn back to the airport, Capt Yusupov said.
“When we saw that the second was also losing power, despite all of our efforts, the plane began losing height,” he said.”I changed my mind several times, because I was planning to gain height,” he said.
But Flightradar data shows that the A321 had only reached 243m (797ft).
“I planned to reach a certain height, hold it there, figure out the engine failure, make the correct decision, work it all out. But then it turned out there was really hardly any time.”
Granular data for this flight, including speed and altitude data
Both pilots, decided to turn off both engines and make an emergency landing nearby airport due to it’s flat, non-populated area.
The aircraft made a hard landing in the cornfield few kilometers from Zhukovsky International Airport. The pilot chose not to lower the landing gear in order to skid more effectively over the corn. The aircraft stopped in the middle of the cornfield with everyone on board alive. The passengers evacuated safely and only minor injuries were reported. The flight has been hailed as “Miracle over Ramensk” due to the name of the area where the cornfield is located.
Why it has happened?
Bird strikes are very common in aviation world and usually they do not result in heavy damage or accidents. However, there were few cases with one of the most famous “Miracle on the Hudson” when US Airways 1549 landed in Hudson river in New York, USA with incredibly everyone surviving the crash. What happened to this particular flight was a heavy hit by a flock of gulls that damaged both engines immediately at takeoff. Zhukovsky airport has seen recently an increase in number of birds around it and the problem was attributed to the illegal waste dumps. The deployed countermeasure systems are overwhelmed and insufficient as reported by state media. Air traffic controllers at Zhukovsky airport warn the pilots before each flight: “We issue warnings to every departing aircraft. The birds come to sit on the runway – there’s the river and the dump nearby, so they’re here constantly.”
Is this flight comparable to US Airways flight 1549?
Yes, it is very similar flight due to the nature of the accident. Both flights hit the flock of birds causing both engine failures. Both flights had to make an emergency landing and remarkably without any fatalities. There are few difference though, the Russian A321 pilots had even less time to react as they reach only 240m in height, while Americans reached 975m more than three times higher than the Ural Airline’s A321 aircarft. The Russian A321 pilots had less flying experience, whereas the US Airways pilot was aged 57, with 30 years’ experience, and had also flown fighter jets. The two Russians, however, had both graduated with top marks from a top civil aviation college. Capt Yusupov joined Ural Airlines in 2013, aged 33, after college; before then he had worked as a lawyer.
In both cases, there were safe landing sites: a corn field and a fairly shallow stretch of the Hudson River.
Hero status
Both pilots, Captain Damir Yusupov and Georgy Murzin, are being hailed as heroes in Russia as well as over the world.
Capt Yusupov and his co-pilot, Georgi Murzin, managed to stop the fuel supply to the engines and kept the jet level, gliding it down into the corn field, without lowering the undercarriage. With the wheels down, there is a risk of flying debris rupturing the plane’s fuel tanks.
He said he had practised emergency landings on a flight simulator at Ural Airlines.
“I really don’t feel like a hero,” he said. “I did what I had to do, saved the plane, the passengers, the crew.”
One of the Russian’s top pilot commented:
“The crew did everything by the book: shut down the engines… brought the plane down really smoothly, touched down first with the tail section, as required, killed the speed – that’s a very tricky moment: you don’t dip the nose, don’t let an engine hit the ground.”
We agree, the flight has been extraordinary and will go down in the history books as “Miracle over Ramensk” because of heroics of pilots that acted professional and exactly how they were trained keeping their head calm and making intelligent decisions that saved lives.
We found one of the many simulations of the flight that mimic the circumstances that occurred on the doomed “Ural Airlines 178” flight:
